Activists want to meet with county about gas industry

Regional activists want to know how Garfield County officials feel regarding the possibility that gas drilling activities may be polluting groundwater in western parts of the county, and they plan on finding out at a Sept. 8 meeting of the board of county commissioners in Glenwood Springs. Representatives of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, a volunteer group of industry watchdogs, and the Western Colorado Congress, a nonprofit that has been involved in numerous Western Slope development issues, will be at the meeting to talk about the impacts of gas drilling on the county's communities and residents. Among the subjects sure to come up, organizers said, are recent findings by the Environmental Protection Agency that gas drilling activities in central Wyoming may have polluted the wells of area ranchers with chemicals used in a practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or “frac'ing.” Frac'ing, a drilling practice that the gas industry says is crucial to recovering hard-to-reach gas and oil pockets deep underground, involves the injection of large quantities of sand, water and chemicals into a well after it is drilled. The high-pressure compound fractures the subterranean strata and releases the gas or oil to flow to the surface...PostIndependent